Transaction logs - runing out of HD space

[julianf]

We have about 100MB of space left on that exchange drive. The logs have grown to 32GB. The backup is taking too long to run.

I tried enabling circular logging to at least stop the logs from growing. This was supposed to remove the log files according to the Microsoft article I read. It has not.

Besides from a full backup, is there possibly another solution to get rid of these transaction logs? Can I not just delete them manually?

 

[dhanley]

Julianf,

Microsoft does not recommend deleting these files manually. I've found the best and safest way to purge these files is to run the native Backup utility. As a general rule, I route the backup to a share with the appropriate disk space.

Once the backup is complete, you will breath easier after the files are purged.

I hope this helps.

 

[julianf]

Thanks,

I ran the backup and it purged the files. I was however looking for a faster method, since the HD space was diminishing rather quickly at one point.

We had asked users to clear their sent and deleted items. This did not seem to have an effect on the HD space. In fact, at one stage it seemed to be contributing to the decrease in HD space - I assume that the activity of deleting items was making the transaction logs grow faster.

Thanks,

Julian

 

[rtichnor]

You should do a de-frag also.

 

[julianf]

The backup worked fine. I will look at doing an online defrag at some stage.

I do not understand why Veritas Backup exec is not removing the log files. I checked this morning.

The agent is installed and the backup says that it is successful. Any ideas?

 

[pelarson]

What we did was set a policy on how long to allow users to keep items in certain folders in their mailboxes. Allowed them 30 days to move any emails they wanted to retain to different folders. Ran NTBackup, made a copy of the backup file, and then ran Exmerge, which I had previously configured and tested, on the Exchange store to remove any emails in the specified folders to a individual PST file, repeated twice on the CEO's mailbox due to all the c**p he had in there(IIRC the PST's started rejecting emails from Exmerge at about the 2gb size). Ran NTbackup on the cleaned up information store. Ran an OFFLINE defrag on the public and private stores. Ran a final NTbackup against the cleaned up and defragged information store. Backed the PST's up in case someone forgot some important piece of mail. Setup a recipient policy in Mailbox Manager in Exchange -

http://www.msexchange.org/pages/article.asp?id=32.

This was for 100+ mailboxes.

 

[Kblack0188]

Make sure that you have the informations selected and not mailboxes. If all you backup is mailboxes it will not purge the logs. You can also run eseutil /mk against the check file (while the server is up) it will give you a decimal number. Convert that to hex and that number will be the last log file played into the databse. You can safely mvoe (or delete) the previous logs because they are no longer needed by the database. I recommend moveing them until you are able to complete a full backup of the information store.

 

[racreek]

Hello Julianf:

I have a client who is having the same problem. I have found the cures for the problem, but, do you ( or anyone else out there) know what causes the transaction logs to grow so rampantly all of a sudden?

Thanks,

racreek

 

[dhar1508]

Hi

I am facing a similar problem. During weekdays, I dont have any problems with transaction logs.

But from Sunday morning 1.40 AM onwards log files start to grow rapidly.

So I stopped
smtp,pop3,imap, nntp, www, mta stacks and routing engine. But log file creation continues until I stop the information store. When I restart all the services life comes to normal.

This has been happening for the past 4 weeks. I updated all the latest patches for windows as well as Exchange 2000 server.

I am sure turning on circular logging is not a solution.

thanks and regars
Dhar